Features

Earlier this month, Berkeley Lab and SLAC hosted the 7th International Conference on Hard X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (HAXPES). This biennial meeting has grown from a small workshop held at ESRF in 2003 with about 50 participants, to a truly international event, which this year attracted 150 participants from 20 countries. ... Read more »

Carolyn Larabell, Director of the National Center for X-Ray Tomography (NCXT), centered around ALS Beamline 2.1, has been selected by the ALS Users’ Executive Committee to receive the 2017 David A. Shirley Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement at the ALS. ... Read more »

A panel of light source users participated in a briefing for Capitol Hill staff highlighting the critical role DOE x-ray light source user facilities play in advancing new technologies, the challenges posed by increasing international competition from Europe and Asia, and how next-generation upgrades to these facilities will open new scientific frontiers. ... Read more »

For ALS Summer Intern Sam Schickler, the most exciting part about the ALS isn’t its famous dome, the particle accelerator it houses, or the x-ray experiments themselves–it’s the data. It’s why the rising 11th grader jumped at the chance to spend the summer at the ALS developing virtual reality (VR) experiences of ALS data and the ALS facility. ... Read more »

There’s some new artwork gracing the ALS lobby—a stately portrait of Berkeley Lab founder Ernest Orlando Lawrence. The painting has a deep connection to the Lab, and so does the artist. He was a longtime Berkeley Lab employee and the father of Berkeley Lab Mechanical Technician Jim Dougherty, who frequently works on the undulators at the ALS. ... Read more »

On Wednesday, March 29, the COherent Scattering and MICroscopy (COSMIC) Beamline (7.0.1) achieved first light, a significant milestone in the ALS’s plans to capitalize on recent gains in soft x-ray coherence provided by modern storage-ring light sources. ... Read more »

The last few months were quieter than usual for ALS users but not for staff tasked with maintaining and improving the ALS. The recent ALS shutdown was one of the longest on record, spanning almost three months. Those involved say it was also one of the most successful, with everything on the to-do list crossed off. The work accomplished paves the way for new beamlines, better water-cooling capacity, and ALS-U. ... Read more »

Stony Brook grad student Tiffany Victor flies to California several times a year to use infrared beams at the Advanced Light Source. Unlike the infrared microscope at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the extremely bright infrared light from the ALS’s synchrotron beamlines improves the image quality and resolution in order to study the interface between the plant and fungus. ... Read more »

The ALS Doctoral Fellowship program allows early-career researchers to spend a year in residence at the ALS acquiring hands-on scientific training and developing professional skills to complement their doctoral research. This year’s program is one of the largest groups to date, with 21 fellows. ... Read more »

Visiting scientists met Jan. 18-20 at Berkeley Lab for a workshop that collected input on the range of new science that will be enabled by the planned upgrade of the Lab’s Advanced Light Source. The upgrade project, known as ALS-U, will boost the brightness, focus, and other properties of the light beams produced at the ALS. ... Read more »

The Advanced Light Source is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Scientific User Facility supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences and operated for the DOE Office of Science by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.